[Illustration: FIG. 68. PETRARCH (1304-74)
"The Morning Star of the Renaissance">[
In Petrarch (1304-74) we have the beginnings of the movement. He has been called "the first modern scholar and man of letters." Repudiating the other-worldliness ideal and the scholastic learning of his time, [4] possessed of a deep love for beauty in nature and art, a delight in travel, a desire for worldly fame, a strong historical sense, and the self-confidence to plan a great constructive work, he began the task of unearthing the monastic treasures to ascertain what the past had been and known and done. At twenty-nine he made his first great discovery, at Liège, in the form of two previously unknown orations of Cicero. Twelve years later, at Verona, he found half of one of the letters of Cicero which had been lost for ages. All his life he collected and copied manuscripts. His letter to a friend telling him of his difficulty in getting a work of Cicero copied, and his joy in doing the work himself (R. 125), is typical of his labors. He began the work of copying and comparing the old classical manuscripts, and from them reconstructing the past. He also wrote many sonnets, ballads, lyrics, and letters, all filled with a new modern classical spirit. He also constructed the first modern map of Italy.
[Illustration: FIG. 69. BOCCACCIO (1313-75)
"The Father of Italian Prose">[
Through Boccaccio, whom he first met in 1350, Petrarch's work was made known in Florence, then the wealthiest and most artistic and literary city in the world, [5] and there the new knowledge and method were warmly received. Boccaccio equaled Petrarch in his passion for the ancient writers, hunting for them wherever he thought they might be found. One of his pupils has left us a melancholy picture of the library at Monte Cassino, as Boccaccio found it at the time of his visit (R. 126). He wrote a book of popular tales and romances, filled with the modern spirit, which made him the father of Italian prose as Dante was of Italian poetry; prepared the first dictionaries of classical geography and Greek mythology; and was the first western scholar to learn Greek.
"In the dim light of learning's dawn they stand,
Flushed with the first glimpses of a long-lost land."
A CENTURY OF RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION. The work done by these two friends in discovering and editing was taken up by others, and during the century (1333-1433) dating from the first great "find" of Petrarch the principal additions to Latin literature were made. The monasteries and castles of Europe were ransacked in the hope of discovering something new, or more accurate copies of previously known books. At monasteries and churches as widely separated as Monte Cassino, near Naples: Lodi, near Milan; Milan, itself; and Vercelli, in Italy: Saint Gall and other monasteries, in Switzerland: Paris; Cluny, near the present city of Macon; Langres, near the source of the Marne; and monasteries in the Vosges Mountains, in France: Corvey, in Westphalia; and Hersfeld, Cologne, and Mainz in Germany—important finds were made. [6] Thus widely had the old Latin authors been scattered, copied, and forgotten. In a letter to a friend (R. 127 a) the enthusiast, Poggio Bracciolini, tells of finding (1416) the long-lost Institutes of Oratory of Quintilian, at Saint Gall, and of copying it for posterity. This, and the reply of his friend (R. 127 b), reveal something of the spirit and the emotions of those engaged in the recovery of Latin literature and the reconstruction of Roman history.
The finds, though, while important, were after all of less value than the spirit which directed the search, or the careful work which was done in collecting, comparing, questioning, inferring, criticizing, and editing corrected texts, and reconstructing old Roman life and history. [7] We have in this new work a complete break with scholastic methods, and we see in it the awakening of the modern scientific spirit. [8] It was this same critical, constructive spirit which, when applied later to Christian practices, brought on the Reformation; when applied to the problems of the universe, revealed to men the wonderful world of science; and when applied to problems of government, led to the questioning of the theory of the divine right of kings, and to the evolution of democracy. We have here a modern spirit, a craving for truth for its own sake, an awakening of the historical sense, [9] and an appreciation of beauty in literature and nature which was soon to be followed by an appreciation of beauty in art. A worship of classical literature and classical ideas now set in, of which rich and prosperous Florence became the center, with Venice and Rome, as well as a number of the northern Italian cities, as centers of more than minor importance.
THE REVIVAL OF GREEK IN THE WEST. With the new interest in Latin literature it was but natural that a revival of the study of Greek should follow. While a knowledge of Greek had not absolutely died out in the West during the Middle Ages, there were very few scholars who knew anything about it, and none who could read it. [10] It was natural, too, that the revival of it should come first in Italy. Southern Italy (Magna Graecia) had remained under the Eastern Empire and Greek until its conquest by the Normans (1041-71), and to southern Italy a few Greek monks had from time to time migrated. With southern Italy, though, papal Italy and the western Christian world seem to have had little contact. In 1339, and again in 1342, a Greek monk from southern Italy visited the Pope, coming as an ambassador from Constantinople, and from him Petrarch learned the Greek alphabet. In 1353 another envoy brought Petrarch a copy of Homer. This he could not read, but in time (1367) a poor translation into Latin was effected. Boccaccio studied Greek, being the first western scholar to read Homer in the original.
Near the end of the fourteenth century it became known in Florence that Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1350-1415), a Byzantine of noble birth, a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy at Constantinople, and the most accomplished Greek scholar of his age, had arrived in Venice as an envoy from the Eastern Emperor. Florentine scholars visited him, and on his return accompanied him to Constantinople to learn Greek. In 1396 Chrysoloras was invited by Florence to accept an appointment, in the university there, to the first chair of Greek letters in the West, and accepted. From 1396 to 1400 he taught Greek in the rich and stately city of Florence, at that time the intellectual and artistic center of Christendom. For a few years, beginning in 1402, he also taught Greek at the University of Pavia. He had earlier written a Catechism of Greek Grammar, and at Pavia he began a literal rendering of Plato's Republic into Latin. From his visit dates the enthusiasm for the study of Greek in the West.
OTHER GREEK SCHOLARS ARRIVE IN ITALY. Chrysoloras returned to Constantinople for a time, in 1403, and Guarino of Verona, who had been one of his pupils, accompanied him and spent five years there as a member of his household. When he returned to Italy he brought with him about fifty manuscripts, and before his death he had translated a number of them into Latin. He also prepared a Greek grammar which superseded that of Chrysoloras. In 1412 he was elected to the chair at Florence formerly held by Chrysoloras, and later he established an important school at Ferrara, based largely on instruction in the Latin and Greek classics, which will be referred to again in the next chapter.